AICTEs library plan irks colleges

Updated on: Wednesday, November 23, 2011

For years, management and engineering colleges had the academic freedom to purchase journal and reference books for their libraries. Some colleges had envious collections; others did not invest in this pursuit.

So, the All-India Council for Technical Education, the umbrella body for professional courses, recently decided to enlist the titles that colleges must stock, creating hullabaloo among management and engineering institutes, which feel it is trampling on their autonomy. In a letter to the HRD minister, Birla Institute of Management Technology director H Chaturvedi said, “I do not understand why a government body must mandate the purchase of certain journals printed by specific publishers? We demand an inquiry into this matter.”

Chaturvedi said heads of several other colleges feel similarly. “Many of us are members on the Delnet and Inflibnet (resource sharing and library networks). Why then must we purchase such expensive journals prescribed by the AICTE?” asked another engineering college head.

AICTE says it mandated these publications after a panel found libraries in several colleges wanting; there were old research books containing outdated material and some institutes had an extremely poor book count. “The books we have prescribed are used in Ivy Leagues. It is time to up quality and the research component in our colleges. We’ve mandated the minimum requirement,” said AICTE director S S Mantha.

AICTEs library plan irks colleges

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